Monthly Archives: May 2020

What is Life?

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The question how dead matter could have given rise to conscious, sentient living beings such as ourselves has been preoccupying people for millennia past. So much so, indeed, that our inability to answer it remains one of the great constants of our history. Just think of the book of Genesis which has God first making man and then breathing into his nostrils “the breath of life.” Thereby turning him into “a living soul” out of whose rib He later fashioned a woman, too; meaning, perhaps, that the process by which Adam was created “out of the dust of the ground” was one of a kind which not even He could replicate

However, many of us moderns do not believe in God and may not even be familiar with the Bible. Let alone know what the Buddha, Plato, St. Augustine, Descartes, and many other philosophers and/or psychologists, biologists and computer engineers had to say about the matter and do so still. So I thought I would try to put together a short list of things which, by their presence or absence, will indicate whether X, or Y, or Z, is or isn’t alive. If not for the benefit others, at any rate for my own.

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  1. Cellular structure. Starting with germs—but not including viruses, which for that very reason are not always included under the rubric, life—all living matter is made up of cells. Cells fall into two basic types, prokaryotic and eukaryotic. Prokaryotic cells do not have a nucleus; eukaryotic ones do. Living organisms are built either of single cells, as bacteria and amoeba are, or of multiple ones.
  2. Self-repair. A cardinal quality only life has is its ability to repair itself. A locomotive, or an automobile, or a computer for that matter, cannot do this. Once something goes wrong, it will either stay wrong or get worse. Not so living organisms. A wound, provided it is not too serious, will start healing itself almost as soon as it is inflicted. Provided there is no infection, a hard object embedded in our flesh will be surrounded by scar tissue and can remain in place for many years without giving rise to any further trouble. In quite some animals even the loss of a tail, or tentacle, or limb, or teeth, will be compensated for by new growth. These are things no inanimate object, natural or artificial, can do. Or, presumably, will ever be able to do.
  3. Metabolism (from the Greek: beyond change); meaning, the sum total of life-sustaining chemical reactionsin organisms. It is generally divided into three parts. First, the conversion of food/fuel into energyon which all physiological processes run. Second, the conversion of food/fuel into building blocks for various kinds of tissue of which the body consists. And third, the elimination of wastes. These enzyme-catalyzed reactions allow organisms to grow, reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. All living organisms necessarily have such chemical reactions; non-living ones do not.
  4. Growth. Given the opportunity, i.e food and a favorable environment, all living creatures grow. A chicken grows into a chick, a human baby into a man or woman many times its size and weight. This is not simply a matter of material being added from outside, as when two or more droplets, bubbles or particles merge during contact to form a single daughter droplet, bubble or particle. Nor of crystallization, as when a solution of certain materials, such as Epsom salt in boiling water, is allowed to cool, causing the salt atoms to run into each other and join together in a crystal. Rather, of a creature growing according to its own internal laws as embedded in its DNA.

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  5. Reproduction. Starting with germs and ending with trees and whales, what all living creatures have in common is their ability to reproduce, i.e make more or less faithful copies of themselves. Not so inanimate objects, not one of which has ever performed that feat. A spoon does not divide to form two spoons, a telephone does not become pregnant and give birth to another telephone. True, a three-dimensional printer can be used to produce as many copies as desired of many objects, parts of itself specifically included. Two printers can even made to work in tandem, producing parts that can then be used to build a third not identical to either of them. What they cannot do is assemble those parts until they form a third printer; that must be done by hand. As long as this is the case the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice, where a broom is first broken in two and then starts reproducing itself and refuses to stop, will remain just that—a story.
  6. Evolution. Reproduction means creating more organisms of the same kind. Not so evolution which, over time, results in the emergence of organisms that, on occasion, can be so different from the original as to be barely recognizable. As, for example, when terrestrial animals evolved out of maritime ones, birds, out of dinosaurs, and humans, out of some ape-like ancestor.
    Changes brought about by evolution are hereditary, which means that they are not simply the product of the natural environment and the organism’s attempt to adapt to it. As far as present-day scientific knowledge goes, what drives evolution is random changes (mutations). Such changes are brought about by errors in a creature’s DNA. The errors themselves can be caused by a. External factors, i.e certain chemicals or high energy particles hitting the DNA molecule in question; b. DNA’s failure to properly mate with its opposite number during conception; and c. DNA being an extremely complicated molecule, it may fail to replicate (copy) itself properly during cell division. Provided they are beneficial rather than harmful, in which case the creature that carries them will be selected out, a long sequence of such changes, known as genetic drift, can result in a new species emerging, at feat no non-living object has ever been able to emulate. That even applies to the so-called evolvabots built by robot-engineer John Long. Evolvabots do mimic some aspects of living systems such as sensing gradients, foraging, maneuvering, evading predators, and attacking prey. However, not one of them has ever changed themselves into something it was not
  7. Consciousness. Just what consciousness is no one knows. Starting with Democritus around 450 BCE, many philosophers and scientists have gone so far as to insist that it is an illusion and that, “in reality,” there is no such thing; all there is are patterns of electric (and chemical, a point that those who claim that brains are just computers often overlook) activity in the brain. However, few if any of them would agree that they themselves do not have it.
    Consciousness is what accounts for our ability to think—cogito ergo sum, as Descartes put it. Not just to answer questions, which properly programmed computers can do as well as, and much faster than, we, but to formulae them. Also, which may be even more important, to experience such feelings as awe, elation, fatigue, fear, joy, hatred, hunger, love, pain, pleasure, and any number of others right down to the end of the alphabet. Though one may doubt whether all these are present in all living creatures—whether, for example, germs can think and trees, experience fear—one thing seems abundantly clear: inanimate objects to not have it.
  8. Purposefulness. Two things can cause the status quo to change; a cause, and a purpose. A cause is exemplified by a push we get from behind, making us move, stagger or fall down. A purpose is something we first set up for ourselves and then, relying on our will, pursue. A cause works from the past into the present; a purpose, from the present into the future. A cause can affect both an inanimate object and a living one. Not so a purpose, which is limited to the latter alone. Whether all forms of life act on purpose we do not know. Some, however, clearly do.

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Conclusion: Note that each one of the above articles refers to an essential characteristic of life. Joined together in a single object, or contraption, or organism, they would actually be life. Yet we still do know how life grew out of inanimate matter. Let alone what it is. Whether or not it is based on ignorance or on fact, it is this gap which, by forcing us to resort to the idea of the free will, governs our systems of education, morality, justice, trade, and much more. As long as it persists, so will we.

Give Me Machiavelli Any Time

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To anyone at all familiar with Indian history and philosophy, the Arthashatra needs no introduction. I myself was introduced to it over a decade ago by a German-American friend, Dr. Michael Liebig, who now teaches Indian cultural history at the University of Heidelberg. He told me that the author was widely considered the Indian Machiavelli, only much more cynical and much more callous. Later I discovered that one of his admirers is former U.S Secretary of State and Chief of the National Security Council Henry Kissinger, himself no small follower of the famous Florentine. It was, however, only during these corona-infested days that I finally got around to actually reading him. And writing down some comments on him, for my own benefit and, hopefully, my readers too.

First, the author. He has been the subject, not just of a single tradition but of at least half a dozen. Each associated with one of India’s subcultures, religions, and regions. As a result, there is very little about him that can be firmly established. Apparently his period of activity started about 330 and ended around 280 BCE. For part of that period he served as chief minister to at least two Mauri Emperors. As such he was involved in every aspect of contemporary statecraft—royal succession, intrigue (including the kind of intrigue that originates in harems), politics, economics, war (both internal, to put down insurrections, and external, against every kind of king, big and small), and what not. Many of the details appear fantastic. For example, that he once took a royal baby from his dying mother’s womb and placed it inside a goat, keeping it alive. And that, at one point in his career when he was living as an ascetic in a forest, he used a secret formula to manufacture no fewer than 800 million gold coins.

Next, the text. Long considered lost, it was known only from references in other works. Including a Greek-language one, Megasthenes’ Indika, which dates to the years around Kautilya’s death. In 1905 a copy, written on palm leaves, was discovered by a librarian in the Oriental Research Institute at Mysore. Internal evidence suggests that it was not, in fact, composed by a single person. Rather, in the form we have it, it is a compilation written, expanded and explained by various people at various times. The title, Arthashastra, is often translated as Politics. In fact, however, it refers to the acquisition and maintenance of material, or perhaps one should say worldly, gain—mainly wealth on the one hand and power on the other. As such it is on a par with two other traditions: Dharma (ethics, religious duty) on one hand and Kama (pleasure, desire) on the other. Joined together, these three are seen as the sum of human life. If not in all incarnations, at any rate in the kind in which not just Indians but all of us live to the present day.

To me the most intriguing aspect of the work, rarely noted by other commentators I have looked at, is the profound contradiction it seems to contain. At peak, the Mauri Empire comprised some two million square miles. More than the present-day state of India and including, in addition to today’s Central and Northern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Its population, which modern scholars have estimated at 50-60 million, was comparable to that of Rome at its height. To administer such a vast realm a sophisticated bureaucracy was needed; such as is, in fact, described by Kautilya. The top layer of the bureaucracy in question was formed by a royal council which was supported by a secretariat or chancellery. There were specialist departments responsible for, among other things, defense, intelligence (including espionage, a field that seems to have fascinated the author and on which he has much advice to offer), the treasury, commerce, auditing, weights and measures, the measurement of space and time, agriculture, mining, forestry (specifically including elephant-forestry), fisheries, and public works, weaving, liquor, and the supervision of prostitutes. Much business was transacted in writing, including secret writing. Rulers were surrounded by elaborate ritual and kept, or were supposed to keep, regular hours devoted to work, worship and leisure. Order and regularity seem to have been the watchwords; albeit that unexpected events on one hand and the peculiarities of individual rulers on the other might cause them to be disrupted.

There is, however, another side to this coin. From beginning to end, the emperor about and for whom Kautilya is writing is referred to as a “king.” That is OK—I do not claim to be a Sanskrit linguist. What I find surprising is that the king’s realm, a huge one by any standard, is said to be surrounded by those of other “kings.” So much so that they form first, second, and even third, four, fifth and sixth degree neighbors. Though not of equal strength, all are addressed by the same title. All are independent of each other, constantly negotiating with each other, stabbing each other in the back, and often fighting each other tooth and nail. Not to mention any number of “wild” peoples who keep rising against the kings and must be kept in check. In other words, what the text really describes is not an empire at all. It is, rather, an international system—a quilt made up of separate realms, many of them as small as they are diverse.

Those who are taking this are more likely to cialis generic tabs have a hemorrhagic stroke. This leads to a widening of blood vessels which supports in adequate blood supply to the sexual organs of the body. cialis 5mg price Complication of dysfunction problem There are a lot of complications of diabetes, which include impotence, neuropathy (loss of sensation or abnormal sensation). viagra brand No doubt, it sildenafil generic viagra is one of the known troubles and is faced by men at one pointof time or the other. However that may be, the text is meandering and, in its attempts to take the reader by the hand and lead him, often truly picayune. In this respect it is as unlike Machiavelli, who was a brilliant writer and stylist, as unlike can be. The following passage is typical:

When a friend does not come to terms, intrigue should be frequently resorted to. Through the agency of spies, the friend should be won over after separating him from the enemy. Or attempts may be made to win him over who is the last among combined friends; for when he who is the last among combined friends is secured, those who occupy the middle rank will be separated from each other; or attempts may be made to win over a friend who occupies middle rank; for when a friend occupying middle rank among combined kings is secured, friends, occupying the extreme ranks cannot keep the union.

This kind of text is about as exciting and as transparent as mud. Personally I find it hard to believe that even a Dr. Kissinger, however brainy he may be, can make himself read it without falling asleep. Consider the following:

A virtuous king may be conciliated by praising his birth, family, learning and character, and by pointing out the relationship which his ancestors had (with the proposer of peace), or by describing the benefits and absence of enmity shown to him. Or a king who is of good intentions, or who has lost his enthusiastic spirits, or whose strategic mean are all exhausted and thwarted in a number of wars, or who has lost his men and wealth, or who has suffered from sojourning abroad, or who is desirous of gaining a friend in good faith, or who is apprehensive of danger from another, or who cares more for friendship than anything else, many be won over by conciliation. Or a king who is greedy, or who has lost his men may be won over by giving gifts through the medium of ascetics and chiefs who have been previously kept with him for the purpose.

Or, or, or, or. The number of possibilities is endless. Each one is divided into branches, and each branch, having been further subdivided, must be explored in some depth. Here as in a great many other traditional Indian philosophical texts, the Kama Sutra specifically included, what we see is the author’s wish to be as systematic and as comprehensive as possible. No set of circumstances, no combination, and no eventuality must be left out. Even at the expense of clarity and readability.

I am reminded of what Clausewitz, in his introduction to On War, has to say about this kind of writing:

It is, perhaps, not impossible to write a systematic theory of war full of spirit and substance, but ours, hitherto, have been very much the reverse. To say nothing of their unscientific spirit, in their striving after coherence and completeness of system, they overflow with commonplaces, truisms, and twaddle of every kind. If we want a striking picture of them we have only to read Lichtenberg’s extract from a code of regulations in case of fire. “If a house takes fire,” he writes, “we must seek, above all things, to protect the right side of the house standing on the left, and, on the other hand, the left side of the house on the right; for if we, for example, should protect the left side of the house on the left, then the right side of the house lies to the right of the left, and consequently as the fire lies to the right of this side, and of the right side (for we have assumed that the house is situated to the left of the fire), therefore the right side is situated nearer to the fire than the left, and the right side of the house might catch fire if it was not protected before it came to the left, which is protected. Consequently, something might be burnt that is not protected, and that sooner than something else would be burnt, even if it was not protected; consequently we must let alone the latter and protect the former. In order to impress the thing on one’s mind, we have only to note if the house is situated to the right of the fire, then it is the left side, and if the house is to the left it is the right side.”

To return to the Arthashastra, give me Machiavelli any time.

Nothing New Under the Sun

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“In the year… there made its appearance that deadly pestilence, which whether disseminated by the influence of the celestial bodies, or sent upon us mortals by God in His just wrath by way of retribution for our inequities, had had its origins some years before in the East, whence, after destroying an innumerable multitude of living beings, it had propagated itself without respite from place to place, and so, calamitously, had spread into the West…

Despite all that human wisdom and forethought could devise to avert it, as the cleansing of the city from many impurities by officials appointed for the purpose, the refusal of entrance to all sick folk, and the adoption of many precautions for the preservation of health, despite also humble supplication addressed to God, and often repeated both in public procession and otherwise, by the devout; toward the beginning of the spring of that year the doleful effects of the pestilence began to be horribly apparent by symptoms that showed as if miraculous…

Which malady seemed to set entirely at naught both the art of the physicians and the virtues of physic; indeed, whether it was that the disorder was of a nature or defy such treatment, or that the physicians were at fault—besides the qualified there was not a multitude both of men and of women who practiced without having received the slightest tincture of medical science—and, being in ignorance of is source, failed to apply the proper remedies…

Moreover, the virulence of the pest was the greater by reason that intercourse was apt to convey it from the sick to the whole, just as fire devours things dry to greasy when they are brought close to it. Nay, the evil went yet further, for not merely by speech or association with the sick as the malady communicated to the healthy with consequent peril of common death; but any that touched the cloth of the sick or aught else that had been touched or used by them, seemed thereby to contract the disease…

Such was the energy of the contagion of the said pestilence, that it was not merely propagate from man to man but, what is much more startling, it was frequently observed that things which had belonged to one sick or dead of the disease, if touched by some other living creature, not of the human species, were the occasion, not only of sickening, but of an almost instantaneous death…

Proper http://deeprootsmag.org/category/departments/bordercrossings/ discount levitra breathing techniques are firmly rooted in these philosophies. Upon application of the lotion, it’s claimed to work cialis without prescription within 10 to 30 seconds. Thus, it is vital that cialis prescription online if you feel no pleasure or lack of it during intercourse, resulting in ED, the problem may be medical, rather mental health related. One more component that accelerates the threat is smoking cigarettes; a distinct habitual pattern that many men and girls grow to canadian cialis pharmacy be acustomed these days. In which circumstances, not to speak of many others of a similar or even graver complexion, divers apprehensions and imaginations were engendered in the minds of such as were left alive, including almost all of them to the same harsh resolution, to wit, to shun and abhor all contact with the sick and all that belonged to them, thinking thereby each to make his own health secure. Among whom were those who thought that to live temperately and avoid all excess would count for much as a preservative against seizure of this kind. Wherefore they banded together, and dissociating themselves from all others, formed communities in houses where there were no sick, and lived a separate and secluded life, which they regulated with the utmost care, avoiding every kind of luxury and drinking very moderately of the most delicate viands and the finest wines, holding converse with none but one another, lest tidings of sickness or death should reach them, and diverting their minds with music and such other delights as they could devise. Others, the bias of whose minds was in the opposite direction, maintained that to drink freely, frequent places of public resort, and take their pleasure with song and revel, sparing to satisfy no appetite, and to laugh and mock at no event, was the sovereign remedy for so great an evil: and that which they affirmed they also put in practice, so far they were able, resorting day and night, now to this tavern, now to that, drinking with an entire disregard of rule or measure, and by preference making the house of others, as it were, their inns, if they but saw in them aught that was particularly to their taste or liking; which they were readily able to do, because the owners, seeing death imminent, had become as reckless of their property as of their lives; so that most of the houses were open to all comers… Thus, adhering ever to heir inhuman determination to shun the sick, as far as possible, they ordered their life. In this extremity of our city’s suffering and tribulation the venerable authority of laws, human and divine, was abased and all but totally dissolved, for lack of those who should have administered and enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead or sick, or so hard bested for servants that they were unable to execute any office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes.

Not a few there were who belonged to neither of the two said parties but kept a middle course between them, neither laying the same restraint upon their diet as the former, not allowing themselves the same license in drinking and other dissipations at the latter, but living with a degree of freedom sufficient to satisfy their appetites, and not as recluses. They therefore walked abroad, carrying in their hands flowers or fragrant herbs or divers sorts of spices, which they frequently raised to their noses, deeming it an excellent thing thus to comfort the grain with such perfumes, because the air seemed to be everywhere laden and reeking with the stench emitted by the dead and the dying and the odors of drugs.

Some again, the most sound, perhaps, in judgment, as they were also the harshest in temper of all, affirmed that there was no medicine for the disease superior or equal in efficacy to flight; following which prescription a multitude of men and women, negligent of all but themselves, deserted their city, their houses, their estate, their kinsfolk, their goods, and went into voluntary exile, or migrated to the country parts, as if God in visiting men with this pestilence in requital of their iniquities would not pursue them with His wrath, wherever they might be, intended the destruction of such alone as remained within the circuit of the walls of the city; or deeming, perchance, that it was now time for all to flee from it, and that its last hour was come.

Of the adherents of these various opinions not all died, neither did all escape; but rather there were, of each sort and in every place, many that sickened, and by those who retained their health were rated after the example which they themselves, while whole, had set, being everywhere left to languish in almost total neglect. Tedious were it to recount how citizen avoided citizen, now among neighbors was scarce fond any that shewed fellow-feeling for another, how kinsmen held aloof, and never met, or but rarely; enough that this sore affliction entered so deep into the minds of men and women, that in the horror therefore brother was forsaken by brother, nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and often times husbands by wife; nay, what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children, untended unvisited, to their fate, as if they had been strangers. Wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity of friends (and few such there were), or in the interest of servants, who were hardly to be had at high rates and on unseemly terms… In consequence of which dearth of servants and dereliction of the sick by neighbors, kinsfolk and friends, it came to pass—a thing, perhaps never before heard of that no woman, however dainty, fair or well-born she might be, shrank, when stricken with the disease, from the ministrations of a man, no matter whether he were young or no, or scrupled to expose to him every part of her body, with no more shame than if he had been a woman, submitting of necessity to that which her malady required; whereupon, perchance, there resulted in after some loss of modesty in such as recovered. Besides which many succumbed, who with proper attendance would, perhaps, have escaped death; so that, what with the virulence of the plague and the lack of due tendance of the sick, the multitude of the deaths that daily and nightly took place in the city, was such that those who heard the tale–not to say witnessed the fact—were struck dumb with amazement.”

You thought there is anything new under the sun? Think again.

The Unbearable Lightness of Lying

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Some time ago on this blog I confessed to a “crime:” namely that, for over thirty-five years now, I have been living with a woman with whom I had an affair while I was still her teacher and she, my student.

Today I want to confess to another “crime.”

This happened about twenty years ago, shortly after I had returned from a year I spent abroad on a sabbatical. I was talking over the phone to a former student of mine, let’s call him X, who had since become a colleague. Suddenly, out of the blue, I heard him say: “Did you know there was a complaint concerning sexual harassment against you?”

“No,” I said. “Tell me about it.”

“He: Do you remember this Colombian student you had?”

“I do” I said. She had been in my class two years earlier. Rumor had it that she was the daughter of some billionaire who had made his money in all kinds of interesting ways. But that was something I only learned after the class had ended.

“Well,” he said, “she launched a complaint. She said you made a pass at her, but she had refused. So you gave her bad grades.” She had, in fact, written three papers, each of which was worse than the last.

“So what did you do?” I asked. At the time, he was in charge of the Hebrew University’s School of Overseas Students where I taught.
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“Very simple,” he answered. “I asked her to let me have the papers in question. I took them, removed both your names, and handed them to a colleague of ours who is an expert on the topic. Having read them, he concluded that the grades you gave her were perfectly OK. Whereupon the matter was closed.”

Now, consider how lucky I was:

First, in that she still had the papers and, instead of hiding them, handed them over.

Second, in that I made a point of always writing down extensive comments on every paper by every student so as to let them know why I had given them the grades I did.

Third, in that X was X. Someone else might have said: “OK, so there is nothing wrong with the grades. But this still does not prove that no sexual harassment took place. Let’s launch an investigation.” Of the kind in which, as we all know, a man is practically certain to be found guilty. And which will taint him forever even if he is acquitted.

Fourth, in that she left the country, which limited the damage she could do me.

So, to let me off the hook, no fewer than four separate strokes of luck were needed. Looking back, I’d put my chances of emerging unscathed at 1 in 104. Others have not been so fortunate.

Just for the record: I only knew she was Colombian because, as I asked everyone for their country of origin at the beginning of the course, she had said so. That apart, I do not recall ever having exchanged a single word with her, either in- or out of class.